


Tending Thorns

by larkscape



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety, Character Study, Fantasizing, M/M, Pining, Pre-Canon, Yuuri Katsuki: flip-flopping between insecurity and iron resolve since time immemorial, by imagining maybe having an actual conversation with your idol, finding your competitive spirit, or kissing his perfect face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-11-09 08:30:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11100813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkscape/pseuds/larkscape
Summary: Yuuri scored sixth place in the Japan Junior Nationals two weeks ago, which objectively he knows is decent — good, even. But it’s not good enough to qualify for the Junior Grand Prix or Worlds. His season is over.How is he ever going to skate on the same ice as Victor Nikiforov likethis?He should have beenbetter.





	Tending Thorns

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Yuuri turned 15 in November of the 07-08 season, and Victor was freshly 19 at the 2008 European Championships, which were held in January in Zagreb, Croatia. (The 07-08 Japan Junior Nationals totally took place at the same time as the senior level and not a month prior, shh. /handwaving)
> 
> Victor’s free skate costume was inspired by [this gorgeous art by junetg](http://junetg.tumblr.com/post/151573070191/ah), and he skates to something along the lines of [Shadow of Doubt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMhSWEu6r6c) from the Escaflowne OST.
> 
> Written to a soundtrack of [Hayley Kiyoko’s Sleepover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6jxPFtIAnw) on infinite, sad loop.

Fifteen, and Yuuri is having one of his bad days.

He’s been at Ice Castle Hasetsu all afternoon, skating slow figures and spirals to the beat of the static in his head, waiting until the doors close behind the last of the daytime skating classes so he can have the ice to himself and push until the all feeling bleeds out of him. He scored sixth place in the Japan Junior Nationals two weeks ago, which objectively he knows is decent — good, even. But it’s not good enough to qualify for the Junior Grand Prix or Worlds. His season is over.

How is he ever going to skate on the same ice as Victor Nikiforov like _this?_ He should have been better.

Disappointment burns bitter in his stomach. Sixth place is not good enough. This morning, he woke with a frantic itch in all his limbs and it’s only getting worse as the day wears on. There’s something lodged in his throat; he can’t decide if it’s a sob or a scream or something else entirely.

He should have been _better._

Yuuko watches him silently from her seat in the booth. He’s grateful that she knows him so well as to leave him alone; he can’t talk to _anyone_ right now, not even her. He keeps his eyes downcast. If he doesn’t look at the other skaters — the after-school crowd of laughing middle schoolers, the elderly couple holding hands as they drift around the periphery of the rink, the gaggle of elementary kids following Takeshi as he guides them in foot placement — he can pretend they’re not watching him, either.

Who is he kidding? Of course they’re watching him. They’re all watching. He hunches his shoulders in tighter, feeling hunted.

After what seems like hours, Takeshi leads his group of young skaters off the ice and calls out the ten-minute warning for closing time. Yuuko leaves the booth for the front counter, ready to collect the rented skates and hand out hot tea in paper cups. At the far end of the rink, Yuuri glides through sluggish figure eights, back and forth, and bitterly surveys the gradual funnelling of people through the front doors. He’s anxious to be alone with the ice.

The last two skaters pass through the exit. Takeshi takes out his keys.

“I’m heading out, Yu-chan,” he says, looking toward the skate check as he pushes the door open. Then, louder so Yuuri can hear him clearly at the other end of the building, “See you, Yuuri! Don’t fall and break my rink!”

Yuuri bites back a groan and waves. Takeshi is already so proprietary and he’s not even a manager — that job will likely go to Yuuko, anyway, so Yuuri doesn’t know why Takeshi’s so pompous about it. He’s always been like that, though, about many things. (Yuuko likes it; “It’s nice when he’s being proprietary about _you,”_ she’d told him once. “It makes you feel very special, like you’re important to him.” Which, of course, she is.)

The thud of the door closing behind Takeshi and the snick of the lock turning over echo off the high ceiling, audible even from where Yuuri drifts across the rink. Yuuko remains somewhere in the depths of the building tending the skates.

_Finally._ The ice is his.

Victor Nikiforov won gold at the European Championships yesterday. Yuuri watched the livestream on his laptop, riveted, hidden away in his room, as Victor’s arms made graceful arcs and his free leg launched him into a perfect quad flip. His platinum hair caught and scattered the rink lights like fresh snow. Yuuri could feel the jump in his own thighs as he watched, the tense of muscle, the weightless lurch in his core as Victor whirled above the ice. The shock of landing, the liquid stretch of his free leg as he flowed back across the ice.

The sense memory won’t leave Yuuri’s limbs. It itches. Victor looked like silk and Yuuri feels like insect bites, his nerves screaming at him to _move._ He kicks off, sharp, crouching into it like a speed skater. His momentum builds until he’s rocketing around the rink with the wind of his passage whipping his hair from his face. He makes two laps, three, racing until the buzzing tremor in his legs settles into a low-grade thrum.

This isn’t _good enough._ He needs to be _better._ His spins were sloppy at Nationals, his jumps weak and unsteady. If he ever wants to stand on the same ice as Victor, he _has_ to be better.

Yuuri lets the drag of ice on his blades slow him a little, so he’s moving at a more reasonable speed rather than barrelling around recklessly. He shouldn’t be pushing this hard, he knows, but he’s frayed at the edges and it’s difficult to stop himself. Victor’s quad flip keeps playing in his head, the way his toe pick bit into the ice, the spray of frost sparkling around him. Yuuri’s mind is thousands of miles away in a foreign rink, skating behind someone he’s never actually met, while his body builds speed and launches, almost without his decision or control, into a triple flip back on the rink at Ice Castle Hasetsu.

It’s a bad idea, of course; he under-rotates, tangles his feet. He ought to know better than to jump without actually being present for it. If Takeshi were still here, he'd be laughing.

Yuuri crashes to the ice, sliding on his shoulder and one gloved palm. On another day he’d be climbing back up to try it again — shocked out of his head and newly focused by the demands of his body — but today he feels made of lead, heavy and too malleable, so he just lays back on the ice and lets the cold seep through his practice jacket to prickle his skin and chill the sweat between his shoulder blades.

His shoulder is throbbing where he landed on it, but he ignores it by main force of will and instead concentrates on his breath until it slows to evenness. _(He should have been better.)_ There’s another video loop playing in his head: Victor’s face, framed by one arm in a layback spin, utterly focused in something like serenity.

Yuuri tries and fails to avoid thinking the word ‘lonely.’ He’s not sure which of them he means it for.

He startles at the sound of the service door falling shut. Yuuko stands by the rink entrance, studying him with a small frown, and he pushes himself up to standing.

“Yuuri, are you okay? Did you hurt your shoulder?”

“I’m fine,” Yuuri says, subdued. He should have been better for _her;_ he feels like he let her down. He’s a disappointment. His best and oldest friend, and she only asked one thing of him, but he couldn’t do it; she doesn’t get to see him compete on the same ice as Victor this year, either.

She tilts her head at him. “You could come off the ice for a little while if you’d like. I’ll get you something warm to drink.”

“Thanks,” he says, “but I want to keep skating. I’m fine, really.” His smile as he draws closer to where she stands is more a firming of his lips than a real expression, but he passes close enough to be in touching distance when he skates past. It’s the most comfort he can bring himself to draw from her presence. He finds himself almost wishing she would leave and scolds himself for it, but he can’t stop thinking that he desperately needs to be alone right now.

She watches him for a couple laps while he reins in his tongue.

“Okay, Yuuri,” she says eventually, “I’m heading inside. You know where to find me.”

Yuuko makes her way back through the service door into the skate storage area. Her exit unlatches his lungs and all the breath comes rushing out — he feels freer unobserved, but also less steady, less focused. Turmoil churns his insides. He’s so… distressed, upset, guilty; he doesn’t feel angry but he thinks that perhaps he should. Maybe if he forces it all out through his fingers and his skates, he can make it leave him alone. He doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to feel the squirming nausea permeating his body.

In search of a distraction, he pushes off on one foot to start a complicated run of turns and crossovers, a sequence he’s been toying with. He wouldn’t put it into a program — he’ll trust the choreographer for that, since it’s not like he’s good enough to do his own — but the intricacy demands enough of his concentration that he can force down the tension under his skin and sublimate it into the smooth glide of his blades on the ice.

He coils into a spin sequence, camel to sit to upright, and tries to blank his mind of all but his next movement as the boards blur past his eyes.

The afternoon dwindles to evening, then fades to night. Yuuri loses himself in the rush of cold air over his face; every jump feels overpowered, every sweep of his arms too loose, too wild, but he can’t stop. He’s never known his way around words, but he can skate himself into the ice.

If someone could read the lines he’s cut into the rink, they would spell out a plea, a disappointed longing for a lost chance.

He should have been _better._

Yuuko calls out to him when she leaves for the night and Yuuri answers with an absent hum. The static is still buzzing high between his ears, even if the quiver in his body has settled a bit.

He gives up on further practice when he flubs a triple axel for the fifth time in a row. He can recognize when driving himself on becomes an exercise in diminishing returns, not that he always heeds the warning signs. His fingers fumble over each other as he unlaces his skates.

Yuuko knows him better than he knows himself, sometimes. When he gets home, there’s a deserted side room and a single cup of tea steaming gently on the low table, and he knows she called ahead for him again. Gratitude warms his throat. He should bring her something nice tomorrow.

Curling up with genmaicha and the fluffy striped blanket from the cubby in the wall, away from prying eyes, is exactly what he needs.

* * *

Yuuri gets lost in his own head sometimes. He doesn’t mean to, he tries to avoid it when he can, but too often the noise and the weight of everyone’s expectations (his _own_ expectations) find their way under his skin until his whole body turns into a swarm of mosquitoes, droning and loud and unbearable. Sometimes it drives him to the rink, alone, where perhaps the speed of his skates over the ice can outpace the whine of insecurity. Other times he shuts down: curls up under the comforter and buries his head beneath the pillows, breathes through his teeth until the fist clenching his lungs loosens enough that he can sleep.

Sometimes his mind takes him away entirely.

His mother always knows, somehow, like she's got a sixth sense for those times when he's absent from his own head. She’ll come to his door with tea or a tray of whatever she's been cooking — udon more often than not in the last few weeks, warm and rich to stave off the cold of the snow outside — and knock lightly to let him know it's there. She never lingers. She understands, better than most, Yuuri’s need to process in private where he can feel safe and unexposed. Yuuko understands, too, even though she tries to push him more; it’s why she mostly left him alone in the rink this afternoon.

He doesn’t deserve their kindness, but he’s grateful anyway.

Tonight is turning into an absent night. Practicing at the rink was a double-edged sword, this time: he’s less jittery after the exertion, but it also gave his anxious thoughts a physical form to cling to. A thousand tiny mistakes from his programs at Nationals are magnified by hindsight. Why couldn’t he have landed _that_ jump _this_ way? Why didn’t his step sequence _then_ flow as well as _now?_

There’s a riot of wasps in his guts. He wraps one hand around the tea cup and uses the other to snug the blanket more firmly around his shoulders, pressing back into its embrace like it can draw the sting out of him.

Victor’s free skate replays in his head.

The choreography was intense from the start: Victor began with a flourish of arms as the first vibrant strains of cello slithered across the rink, and when the tempo kicked up he dove into a flawless quad salchow whose setup didn’t seem like it could possibly have built enough speed. Victor made it all look fluid and effortless. Rhinestones splashed across his shoulder and down along the open front of his costume; the nude mesh panel bared his chest almost to the navel, stark against the deep navy fabric. He’d looked like the Milky Way in midwinter, a river of stars flowing over his body, bright points of reflected light picking out tiny constellations down his arms and across his hips as he moved.

Curled in the blanket, Yuuri clutches his tea cup to his chest, buries his face in his knees and breathes. His mind pores over the memory of Victor’s turns, his jumps, the breathless joy of his death drop into a combination spin, the precise curve of his body as he caught his foot behind him. The way he poured himself like water into his end pose, one arm floating toward the sky with his back almost horizontal.

Yuuri had hardly even needed to watch the scoring. It was a flawless performance, the program technically challenging far beyond what any of his competitors had attempted. Even Christophe Giacometti couldn’t come close, despite upping the difficulty of his own program mid-season. Yuuri knows how Victor likes to switch elements of his programs from one competition to the next in his relentless quest for perfection, and yet every time he is surprised anew.

He was not surprised at all, however, when Victor broke the world record for men’s singles free skate. Overjoyed, but not surprised. That kind of score is the inevitable result of Victor’s talent.

Victor is in Zagreb breaking world records and Yuuri is two-footing triple axels at Ice Castle.

It _burns,_ how much he wants to share the ice with Victor.

He should have been better. He _needs_ to be better.

He _can_ be better.

Secure in the striped blanket and nestled on a cushion in a corner of the small room, Yuuri allows himself to imagine. Perhaps next season or the following, when Yuuri moves to the senior division and when (If? No, _when_ ) they both make it to the Grand Prix Final, Yuuri could skate a long program so incredible that he could stand with Victor on the podium. What if… what if he took _gold?_ What if _Yuuri_ was the one on the top of the podium, Victor on the second step next to him...?

Yuuri feels a point of heat bloom across his knee and realizes he’s lost track of his limbs, spilling his undrunk tea. He flushes. It feels like chastisement for thinking he could possibly best Victor. The tea cup goes back on the table and Yuuri rearranges the blanket enough to move the small wet spot away from his skin, but doesn’t bother getting up for a towel. He didn’t spill much, it’ll be fine — and besides, getting a towel means venturing into the kitchen and he doesn’t want to risk having to talk to anyone right now.

His nerves are still unpleasantly electrified. He closes his eyes and tries to will the feeling away.

Okay, not gold. Victor deserves every gold medal and then some. Yuuri is perfectly happy with silver. But they would both medal, which means they’d be skating in the gala exhibition together. Could they skate… _together?_ Victor’s strong, he could do lifts. Yuuri has always wanted to try pairs skating, beyond the playful late-afternoon attempts at ice dance he and Yuuko have made at Ice Castle. Victor would take it seriously. Victor would—

No, he’s getting ahead of himself. They wouldn’t have time to put together an actual pairs program, but maybe they’d brush past each other in practice, or accidentally synchronize their sit spins. Maybe Victor would be impressed enough with Yuuri’s medal-winning programs that he’d want to practice _with_ Yuuri in the morning, before the gala.

Maybe they could sit together and have an actual conversation at the banquet that night.

Warmth blooms like sunflowers in Yuuri’s chest. He could be charming. He’s sure he can manage to be charming if it’s for Victor. He could invite him back to Japan for a while. They could skate together at Ice Castle, learn each other’s choreographies and help each other polish them for Worlds.

“I have a key,” Yuuri would say, “we can stay as late as we want.”

“Oh, you have a _key,”_ Victor would say, teasing, and then he’d _wink—_

It feels like the height of impropriety to even imagine it, but the image is in his mind now and he can’t drive it out. The striped blanket is crushed in his fists, pulled taut across his shoulders. He worms deeper into its embrace.

_They’ll skate together until long after the sun sets, until Mari stops texting him reminders for dinner and starts texting him raised-eyebrow kaomojis and terrible jokes about not doing anything she wouldn’t do. Victor is fascinated by the idea of the two of them skating a pairs routine; he’s built half a choreography by the end of the night and they’ve tried six different lifts that Yuuri never would’ve had the guts to suggest himself. Yuuri is exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure. Victor wears his sunshine smile. They unlace each other’s skates with fingers gone half-numb and laugh quietly when Yuuri’s knees wobble on the way to the door._

_The walk back to Yu-topia is agonizing, over too soon and yet not nearly long enough. Yuuri tries not to sway too close but Victor brushes their shoulders together every now and then. When they finally walk in the door, everyone is already asleep, the entry lit only by the courtyard lamps and the dim glow of the kitchen light. Yuuri leads Victor to this very room and turns on the television, low, then pulls the blanket from the cubby so they can warm up together._

There should be tea, Yuuri thinks.

_Yuuri makes tea in the soft light of the kitchen; when he comes back, Victor is nodding off to the murmur of some terrible late-night drama and Yuuri drowns in a wave of tenderness. He says Victor’s name and hands him a cup, and Victor sits up just enough to avoid spilling it. Yuuri settles himself on a cushion, curled and shy, not close enough to intrude on Victor’s space but not too far because Yuuri can’t bear to be away from him. Victor turns his brilliant ocean-blue eyes to Yuuri and—_

_He lifts the edge of the blanket and says “You look cold,” and beckons Yuuri in to lean against his side._

Oh, Yuuri thinks. Oh, yes.

_Yuuri leans his temple against Victor’s warm shoulder. Victor drops his head onto Yuuri’s, his long graceful arm wrapping around Yuuri’s shoulders, drawing him into Victor’s heat. Their sides press together under the shelter of the blanket. Yuuri is not cold, Yuuri is_ burning.

_Victor turns—_

Yuuri can hardly believe his own daring, just _thinking_ it—

_—turns his head and presses his lips to Yuuri’s hair. Yuuri twists toward Victor and brushes his nose against the stretched-out collar of Victor’s training shirt. Victor’s arm tightens around him. Yuuri takes it as the permission it is and nuzzles into his neck like a cat, buries his face in the soft skin over Victor’s collarbone. Victor hums with delight as Yuuri drags his parted lips over the side of Victor’s neck. He nudges their cheeks together, lips at Yuuri’s ear. Slides his hand down to squeeze Yuuri’s hip closer._

_The tea is left to cool on the table while they’re busy cocooning into the blanket. Victor swings Yuuri’s legs over his lap and tangles their fingers together in the warm close space between them, buried in soft fabric. Victor cradles Yuuri’s cheek in his lovely hand and whispers, “You’re perfect.” He presses kisses to Yuuri’s forehead, his eyebrow, his nose._

_Yuuri, overcome, surges forward, not even to kiss Victor but to simply be closer to him somehow, to fold himself into Victor’s space and lap and limbs. He wants to climb into Victor’s ribcage and hide there in its shelter, lulled by the gentle thump of Victor’s heartbeat._

_Their cheeks press together, their mouths find each other, their lips drag and catch. A fire sparks in Yuuri’s chest. He threads his fingers through Victor’s hair, pulling him closer, sipping at his lips like wine. He is overflowing with honeyed feeling and he pours it into Victor’s mouth through their kiss. They—_

A pot clangs in the kitchen and Yuuri comes crashing back to himself, face flooding with heat. He’s still bundled tight in the striped blanket, sitting alone in the room, leaning sideways almost to the tipping point with his arms wrapped around himself. Straining toward someone not there, toward a space that should hold something warm and beloved but instead holds only cold, empty air. A single cup of tea sits cooling on the table.

He shoots to his feet, races to his room, slams and locks the door. Each breath catches in his throat.

His chest _aches._

_He has to be better._

* * *

Yuuri takes gold in Regionals, the next year. He doesn’t quite medal at JGP Merano, but earns a silver at Golden Lynx and misses qualifying for the Junior Grand Prix Final by a tiny handful of points. Then he takes silver at Nationals. Victor is in the senior division while Yuuri is still in juniors, but Yuuri doesn’t even care — he will be, not just _better_ , but the _best._ (Can he think that? Is it allowed? He buries his greed deep beneath his ribs, where he can ignore the guilt that accompanies it.) He will keep fighting until he stands next to Victor; he will astound him in his senior debut. The memory of that imagined Victor, wrapped around him, pressing kisses to his face, is a red-hot poker spurring him on.

On Yuuri’s bad days it terrifies him, an accusatory burn: _how dare you think you could measure up to him? How dare you even try?_ On his good days it’s a goal, a sweet fire lacing along his nerves, enticing him.

Victor loves to surprise people. Yuuri will be the one to surprise _him._


End file.
